Makeover My Small Vanity: Sneak Peak into My Makeup Hoard

Hey everyone I know I’m late AHHH!! but its been a busy week and it doesn’t look like it’s letting up. Anyway I hope you are all doing well! I have made it through my weekend of working and now enjoying some needed days off.

We all know as parents and home owners that we never really get a day off. Whether it be dishes, laundry or the old rickety fence in the back yard, there is always something that’s needs to be done! So this week I figured I’d tackle a chore that would at least be fun and that is my makeup vanity area. Now I have a small house which leaves little room for an “actual” vanity area, so I’m left making use of this lonely corner of my bedroom.

As you can see I’m not working with much haha! My main problem is I have more makeup then I do room to store it. I also love to display my eyeshadow palettes (and I have a lot) so it was hard to pick what pieces I wanted to keep out and which I needed to put away.

So I really wanted to focus on the bottom half of my vanity, specifically the white 3 drawer storage containers and the bench. I think this is the biggest eye sore so I wanted to cover it up and organize the drawers so they actually provided some use. So grab your decoupage tools, some glitter and lets get started!

So these are the insides of my drawers, YIKES! I was trying to separate the drawers by nail products, hair products and makeup but as you can see by the last 2 pictures my makeup was starting to get a little bit out of hand. I could hardly even open the top drawer it was so full of makeup, everything in the laundry basket came out of that drawer!

So I started by clearing out all the drawers and separating my products into those categories (Sorry I forgot to take a picture of the piles.) Once I had the drawers cleared out I needed to get some sort of baskets to hold my items in. Now you can just go to the Dollarama and buy some of the plastic containers, they come in lots of sizes and colors but I decided to DIY mine. If you don’t have this stuff already kicking around I do suggest just buying the plastic holders as it will be much cheaper then going and buying everything listed below. I had so many boxes kicking around from my Boxy subscription and all the makeup I buy online, plus everything else needed so I decided to cover these and use them as my holders.

So if you want to DIY your own holders you’ll need the following: colored cardstock in any pattern you want, spray adhesive, shoe boxes, scissors, sticky tac and an exacto knife.

So first I needed to take off the lids to the boxes, I used the exacto knife to remove those and of course recycled them. If your able to use them for something else great but I had no use for them. I then had to determine how the boxes would fit in the drawers and from there I knew how many boxes I needed to cover.

The next step was to cover the boxes in the card stock so they looked all fancy haha! I used the spray adhesive to cover the back of the card stock. To do this take this outside or to a well ventilated area, don’t worry you got time as it stays tacky for a few minutes.

Center the box on the back side of the paper and cut slits up the side lining up with the box. Then go along pressing the paper onto the sides of the box. You want to have enough over hang to cover the inner sides of the box, of course my cardstock wasn’t big enough but oh well. You can also use contact paper if you want or any type of sturdy paper, even wrapping paper will work!

So this is what my box looked like after I covered it and placed them in the drawers. I used tissue paper to line the boxes to help cover the parts the paper wasn’t able to cover. I also used the sticky tac to secure the boxes to the bottom of the drawer.

Next I began to fill them, at this time I went through everything and decided if it was a keeper, if it was trash or if it belonged somewhere else. I started with the bottom drawer that I dedicated to nails and art stuff like gems, glitter, etc. I put this stuff on the bottom as it was stuff I didn’t access that much and I didn’t need it at arms reach.

Before I had all my nail polishes in a bag that was over flowing, I had palette boxes I was keeping to SOMEDAY make into shadow boxes and some other random items I wasn’t sure why I was keeping. I went through my nail polish and threw out all the old colors or colors I no longer liked and placed them all upright into one of the boxes. I then placed all my fake nails into the box beside the polishes and all my gems and glitter behind that. I tried to place everything I use most often at the front and put things I use less at the back. I am still going to make those shadows boxes but I didn’t need to keep all those boxes in my vanity area…I have a craft room for that haha.

Next was my hair product drawer this was a messy drawer but the easiest to clean as half the shit I kept in here belonged in my bathroom….Go figure haha. Once I cleared out all the stuff that didn’t belong the drawer became a little more manageable. I put all my ponytails in one box, my clips in the other and my wig accessories in the back box since I don’t uses these that often.

The last drawer was the hardest drawer to organize and that was the makeup drawer. This is what it looked like before, as you can see I can barely open the drawer to show you what’s in the back but its all in the basket….ya its a lot. Like the first drawers I did I started by going through it and separating out what I actually wanted in the drawer, what belonged else where and what just needed…to go. Once I was done that I was unsure how I wanted to organize the shelf. In my next post ill show you the revamp of the top half of my vanity but after organizing that I was left with a few acrylic displays and I really didn’t want to get rid of them as they are a bit pricey.

This is the finished result, I managed to remove a lot of makeup I don’t use and either toss it or relocated to my spare makeup stash…yes I have a spare makeup stash haha. I have 3 of those acrylic squares stacked on top of each other in the corner. The top square has all my eye primers, the next one has mascaras and lipsticks and the last one has concealer sticks. I have 1 acrylic square next to it with my face primers and a few random items standing beside it. In the back I have a small acrylic 3 drawer storage unit that has a few eyeshadow palettes and some odds and ends I use but not often.

Lastly I wanted to cover everything because even though the drawers where organized I still didn’t want to see inside them. So I found some outdoor fabric from Walmart for about $15.00, I hemmed the edges and sewed a Velcro strip to the top and wala. I glued the other side of the Velcro to a piece of board my husband cut to fit the top of the organizer. I had also covered the board in faux marble contact paper I got from the Dollarama for $1.25.

The throw I used over the chair I had purchased at winners for under $15.00 and the white fur I had left over after making the pillow. I might take the fur off the top I’m still undecided, sorry for the photo bomb my son needed to get in there and check things out!

Here is the transformation I think its a huge difference, still not exactly what I wanted but I will continue to make tweaks. I will say though I am very happy with how the cover turned out! Its so nice not to see all the bins of stuff I have, I may buy a different colored throw just to add a pop of color to the mix.

I hope you liked part 1 of my vanity makeover! Stay tuned as part 2 is in the works and you can see how I transformed the rest of my small vanity. As always I love to hear from you and if you have a small vanity as well I’d love to hear any tips or tricks you may have in utilizing your space. Until next time stay sane and have fun!

Welcome

I’m​ Brett
I’m a Wife and Mother to two beautiful hellians
You can find me raiding The local Michaels
while pigging out on Quiznos and Dairy Queen.
There’s lots of laughs to be had
So stick around, Its going to be a fun ride!